All Rise, Mamet's Court Is in Session and Unraveling

Listen up, you mugs. Nobody makes fun of David Mamet, see, because David Mamet can take care of that all by hisself. In "Romance," the latest work from this most imitated and parodied of living American playwrights, Mr. Mamet knocks the four-letter stuffing out of his own staccato style.

He then proceeds to beat up on classic farce, ethnic and sexual stereotypes and, it might be argued, his audience. It's a take-no-prisoners approach that, unfortunately, doesn't capture laughs either.

"Romance," which opened last night at the Atlantic Theater Company under the direction of Neil Pepe, might be regarded as a companion piece to Mr. Mamet's "Boston Marriage." In that play, staged at the Public Theater in 2002, the testosterone-based dramatist tried his hand at an all-female (and all-lesbian) period drawing-room comedy. This seemed to be a nose-thumbing answer to critics who complained that the celebrated author of the all-male "American Buffalo" and "Glengarry Glen Ross" (to be revived on Broadway later this season) was incapable of writing meaty roles for women.

"A Boston Marriage" was a self-indulgent, sometimes clever trifle that allowed Mr. Mamet to flex new, previously undetected and wholly inessential muscles. But it looks monumental next to "Romance," which detonates the traditional courtroom drama while deliberately letting the air out of his signature steroid-pumped dialogue.

It also features a cast of six characters, all men and at least three (maybe five) gay. One of these men -- just to give you an idea of the play's tone -- is nicknamed Bunny (or Buns) and wears a teeny thong beneath a cunning little apron while crying contact-lens-shedding rivers over burnt pot roasts and insensitive lovers.

"Romance" fits into that unloved category that might called be the Work of Contempt, created when an artist becomes weary of hearing about his limitations and perhaps equally weary of working within them. An account of a pointless trial-from-hell presided over by a pill-popping, allergy-addled Judge (Larry Bryggman), "Romance" mixes elements of W.S. Gilbert-style satire, Marx Brothersesque anarchy and, above all, Lenny Bruce-like shock tactics.

Insult-driven dialogue, always a Mamet specialty, is pushed to its satiric limits here. The Defense Attorney (Christopher Evan Welch) is Protestant, while the Defendant (Steven Goldstein), whose alleged crime is never made clear, is Jewish. This means, in the world of "Romance," that they despise each other. "You people can't order a cheese sandwich without mentioning the Holocaust," the Defense Attorney says. The Defendant complains: "I hired a goy lawyer. It's like going to a straight hairdresser."

In the meantime, the Prosecutor (Bob Balaban) is having problems at home with his tantrum-prone boyfriend, the aforementioned Bunny, or Bernard (Keith Nobbs), whose unexpected arrival in the courtroom brings out the inner Queer Guy in the Judge and his Bailiff (Steven Hawley). And, by the way, a Middle East peace conference is taking place in the same city at the same time.

Mr. Mamet would seem to be trying to point out the self-destructive and ineradicable absurdity of ethnic hatred while taking sideswipes at a society that exalts the most superficial aspects of stereotyped homosexual culture. But he is pushing an envelope that has already been through the shredder. This is, after all, the age of Howard Stern, Jon Stewart and a proud host of caveman comedians.

The cast is as good as can be expected under the circumstances, and Mr. Pepe's direction maintains the requisite, er, straight face. But for all its madcap frenzy, "Romance" feels fatigued from the get-go. At their considerable best, Mr. Mamet's plays provide shots of full-strength theatrical adrenaline. This one has the impact of an over-the-counter sleeping pill.